Free money: When government spending knows no limits
The world this week
Leaders
Macroeconomics
Governments must beware the lure of free money
Budget constraints have gone missing. That presents both danger and opportunity
Regional development
The best-run cities of America’s Midwest offer lessons in recovery
How to revive and thrive
Pulling together
Europe’s €750bn rescue package sets a welcome precedent
Even if the details are fraught
Protecting other planets
Mars may be a pristine ecosystem
Earthlings should be careful not to contaminate it
Letters
On Hong Kong, short-sellers, the Supreme Court, horse jumping, “The Prisoner”, medical terms, breadmaking
Letters to the editor
Briefing
Starting over again
The covid-19 pandemic is forcing a rethink in macroeconomics
It is not yet clear where it will lead
Europe
A big fiscal deal
The EU’s leaders have agreed on a €750bn covid-19 recovery package
Keep pedalling the tandem
The founding partnership behind this week’s EU deal
Germany’s wurst jobs
After spreading covid-19, a huge European abattoir vows reforms
Bullies on a beach
A seaside-villa scandal sparks huge protests in Bulgaria
A tarnished crown
Spain’s King Felipe is distancing himself from his father
Britain
Putin’s fingerprints
Russian interference highlights Britain’s political failings
Demography
Britain’s baby bust
Gypsy lives matter too
Britain’s Gypsies and travellers demand justice
Covid-19 and work
Anxiety levels rise among furloughed Britons
Britain, the EU and fish
How fisheries could sink a Brexit trade deal
Middle East & Africa
A Potemkin economy?
Why Tanzania’s statistics look fishy
Power unmasked
Can Uganda have a fair election amid covid-19?
Mission unaccomplished
Binyamin Netanyahu boasted too soon of defeating the coronavirus
No passport required
Vloggers show how to migrate illegally on a jet ski
Maids for sale
Bigotry against black people poisons the Arab world, too
United States
Congress and covid-19
America’s backwards coronavirus strategy
One-handed economics
Generous unemployment benefits are not keeping Americans from work
Easing lockdowns and covid-19
The geometry of the pandemic in America
Minnesota vice
What is a police department for?
The Americas
Youth departs
Mexico’s emigrants in America are ageing
Welcome Zoomers
Barbados invites you to work from the beach
Asia
A milder infection
The Philippine peso is the champion of emerging-market currencies
Sailing without sailors
As crews grow old, Japanese shipping firms try to do without them
China
International
Special report
The Midwest
A region with outsized punch
Cities
The urban prairie
Race and the city
Separate, downtrodden
Industry
America’s Mittelstand
Universities
From rustbelt to brainbelt
Politics
America’s divided middle
Nature’s metropolis
Don’t be the next Cahokia
Business
Sixty seconds of fame
TikTok’s Chinese parent is scrambling to hang on to its hit app
In need of a software update
Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence
Seeing is disbelieving
America Inc braces for an earnings bloodbath
Schumpeter
MercadoLibre is a wannabe Alibaba
Finance & economics
Putting the capital into capitalism
Banks lose out to capital markets when it comes to credit provision
Shining brightly
Unusually, copper and gold prices are rising in tandem
Swarming to market
Ant Group announces plans to list in Shanghai and Hong Kong
Science & technology
Astrobiology
Is there life on Mars?
Culture
The cape and the masks
Bullfighting in the era of covid-19
Rock’n’roll fiction
David Mitchell’s new novel is the story of a rock band
Home Entertainment
“Catch-22” and the caprices of bureaucracy
Johnson
The shadowlands of language
Economic & financial indicators
Graphic detail
Obituary
A country’s conscience